


Getting There Is Half The Fun, Come Share It With Me

by Geekhyena



Category: InCryptid - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Cryptids, Cute Americana, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28084941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geekhyena/pseuds/Geekhyena
Summary: Snippets from Verity and Dominic's road trip back to Oregon. Pure, unadulterated road trip fluff as they try to figure each other out and find out who they are when things aren't quite so chaotic. Obliquely references the free Verity/Dominic short stories available on the Incryptid Short Fiction page of Seanan's website.
Relationships: Dominic De Luca/Verity Price
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Getting There Is Half The Fun, Come Share It With Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [estelraca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! Not quite their married life, more their pre-wedding honeymoon, but face it, they were basically married as soon as she invited him west and he said yes, and I love the way their relationship has developed over the course of the books. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Thanks to Kairos and Lynoth for being such awesome betas!
> 
> (There is a livestock conservancy in Pittsboro, NC, but as far as I know there are no fire-breathing cattle there. Yet. The pie bar/speakeasy in Denver, however, is 100% real, and delicious)

_Somewhere off I-81 in Pennsylvania, on the first day of our intrepid journey:_

While we were going to take our sweet time getting to Oregon, getting out of New York had been a priority. Thus with a U-Haul full of belongings and stomachs full of coffee, we set out bright and early in the morning, heading south. First stop was Charlottesville, VA, which was a decent drive, at least in a U-Haul, but which also afforded us a safe place to stay once we got there. While we stayed on the highway most of the trip, it was at least a nicely scenic part of the highway. 

“So why Charlottesville?” Dominic asked, as we stopped for gas. We were somewhere in Pennsylvania, and Dominic was in charge of acquiring us lunch from the gas station while I checked to make sure everything was going smoothly so far with the truck.

“A few reasons - one, one of Alex’s friends is doing a postdoc there at the university, and so we already have someone there who’s scoped out local cryptid-friendly places to stay, and there’s a cute little bed and breakfast we can stay at, with a separate room for the mice, even. Two, I have been assured that we can find copious amounts of food, and I feel like we’ll be pretty hungry by the time we get there. Three, because stopping in Charlottesville for the night means that we are one day’s drive away from Dollywood.”

“Dollywood?”

“Our Lady of Sass and Sequins, Dolly Parton. I figure this trip might as well expose you to some of the bits of America not covered in your training, and we could use a bit of fun.” I winked at him as he walked into the Sheetz to get us drinks and something to eat, and turned to fuel up the truck. 

I was taking Dominic there because I figured we could use a bit of a breather. We’d left Manhattan in rather hectic circumstances, but also, maybe we needed a chance to have some thrills and see the sights in a non-frantic situation. We hadn’t exactly done any traditional touristy stuff while we were in New York, but our family had been linked to carnivals and shows for so long that the idea of a day at a theme park as a date seemed like perfect sense. We could ride rollercoasters, listen to some music, and see what happened if we tried normal stuff. Not that we’d ever been normal, but part of me thought it would be nice to just hold hands and walk around and be together -without- anyone trying to kill us. Even Batman deserved a day off, or something like that.

Besides, I loved Dollywood. Childhood vacations had often involved trips to carnivals, or Lowryland, and once even a trip to the Calgary Stampede, but my grandparents had also viewed any location within a day’s drive of their home in Ohio as on the ‘reasonable vacation spots’ list. Thus the trips to Dollywood. Even as a kid, I’d loved Dolly’s outfits and thought the theme park was cool. As an adult, I still appreciated her outfits, but now I also felt a good chunk of nostalgia for the place.

I realized that part of this trip was a chance for us to get to know each other, and for me to show him who I was, away from all the high stakes and chaos of New York. Our lives would always be chaotic, the “luck” that followed my family around made sure of that, but maybe this would be a chance for us to get to know each other more, without everything being quite so frantic. He’d given up so much, maybe this was me trying to show what he was getting in return. 

  
  


_At an undisclosed location outside of Pittsboro, NC, visiting a research and conservation center you won’t find on any official maps:_

“Look, Dominic, it likes you!”

“I admit, that when you invited me to head back to Oregon with you and ‘see the sights along the way’, fire-breathing livestock was not a sight I had expected.”

“Oh, come on, the Covenant definitely knows about catoblepases….catoblepae? Whatever the correct plural is. They probably just didn’t mention how cute they are when they’re little.” Dominic was standing in front of a lush pasture containing a herd of bronze-hided cattle, two of which were currently investigating the edibility of his jeans. 

“They also forgot to mention that they appear to enjoy the taste of denim when they aren’t setting things on fire.”

“Oh, it’s okay, their breath doesn’t get risky until they’re a bit older - and these two are this year’s former bottle babies.” The researcher who had been showing us around was quick to reassure us, albeit from behind a very thick pair of glasses. “They needed some extra TLC when they were tiny so even now that they’re back with the herd, they’re even more curious about people than most of their buddies. They seem to think we’re here for their entertainment, I swear.”

Like Dollywood, this was getting him to expand his horizons a bit - first rollercoasters and the idea of “relaxing” and “funnel cake”, now seeing more of the conservation that we’d carefully hidden and kept safe for so long, even in the face of threats like the Covenant. This patch of well-fenced land, hidden behind some of the best illusions we’d ever seen, was a conservation and research center for some of the cryptids that were almost like normal livestock, but just weird enough to count as cryptids. Their research flock of basilisks was related to the ones that Alex was currently keeping in Ohio, but the center also raised other livestock-adjacent cryptids like vegetable lambs, both clockwise and counterclockwise sidehill gougers, cerynian hinds, and Colchis Bulls, aka catoblepae, aka “why is that cow breathing fire?”. 

The cattle continued their investigation of the potential edibility of Dominic’s jeans. It was adorable. I surreptitiously snapped a photo on my phone to save for later amusement. 

Dominic looked a bit put-upon at his fate as bovine entertainment, but he wasn’t exactly moving away, either. His face softened a bit as he looked at them, and then looked cautiously at the adults of the herd, who were grazing further away but keeping an eye on us. They really were elegant-looking animals, with lyre-shaped horns and hides that gleamed in the midmorning sun. You could almost pass them off as a rare breed you could show at a fair, given their overall normalish cow shape and their ability to eat just about any plant. If you were willing to overlook the whole ‘breathes fire when they feel like it’ thing, at least. 

Some of the researchers here said they hoped if scientists could understand enough about these animals and how their unique biology worked, maybe they could be brought back into the public eye - I know at least one researcher viewed these cattle as a novel solution for invasive plant management - but in the meantime, they were well loved and well looked after in little hidden patches like this one. 

I decided to have mercy on him. “Come on, let’s go look at the swamp jackalopes. I promise those won’t try to eat your jeans.” I smiled, and he smiled back, and something inside me melted even more. He really was trying. 

_Observations on the behavior and habits of D. DeLuca, after one month on the road together:_

Back in New York, things had been very physical and very intense, but here, going slow, stuck in the same U-Haul all day, things had become intense in a different way, but also….I didn’t know how to put it, but it was nice. So much of this was new to both of us; I mean, we’d done plenty of road trips before as a family when I was a kid, but bouncing our way along the highways and scenic routes together like this, with the man I loved and really, really wanted to marry….this was a different kind of intense. A sweeter, softer kind that was nonetheless getting stronger by the day. 

We’d taken our time winding our way down the east coast, stopping here and there as the mood or other interests took us, and finally hit the gulf coast, and US Highway 98, after about a month on the road, and were slowly winding our way towards New Orleans. In that month, I admit, I’d started noting all the unexpected, and honestly kinda cute, things he did. And the infuriating but cute ones. Really, just seeing him relaxed so often was novel in and of itself, but I just kept adding things to the mental list. Some of the more interesting entries:

  * The way he fiddles with the straw on a drink when he’s nervous or trying to find the right word 
  * The way he tries to surreptitiously roll his eyes when I insist on stopping at an interesting looking roadside attraction, because our definition of “interesting” isn’t always 1:1 
  * The way his face lights up when we see a cool roadside food stand, and how he likes to examine all the different varieties of treats on offer before coming back to the truck with whatever local produce caught his eye 
  * The face he makes when I insist that ice cold gas station pickles are one of the great American road trip delights, like he cannot believe he’s in love with a woman who thinks pickle juice is an acceptable drink 
  * How the Covenant apparently didn’t seclude its trainees from modern music, and how he really gets into singing along when Bohemian Rhapsody comes on the radio
  * His singing voice - he’s better at it than he admits to, and his drumming along on the dashboard just adds to the appeal
  * The way he tries not to smirk when I grumble about how trying to steer the U-Haul is like trying to wrestle a tank sometimes
  * His fondness for gas station pastries, but only ever the turnover/bear claw/apple fritter kind, never the donuts
  * The way he sputters and inhales sharply when another driver does something stupid, or when I make snarky comments about the skill of said driver
  * The way he makes sure to carefully fold the wrapper of the burrito/burger/whatever food we’re eating in the car, before he hands it to me, so that I can eat while still keeping all my focus on the road
  * How we both hog the mirror fiddling with our hair in the mornings, and how sometimes we wind up giggling and elbowing each other, and it makes the morning start off on a good, albeit silly, note
  * The way sometimes he can’t sleep, and I’ll find him on the roof of wherever we’ve stopped for the night, looking like an out-of-place Batman and brooding. I don’t know what he thinks about, when he does it. I’m never sure if he wants company or not. But sometimes, when he’s done, he slips back into bed, and he drapes his arm over me, and things feel right. It feels like the way things are supposed to be.



_Just outside Minneapolis:_

On the radio, Simon and Garfunkel sang about looking for America, and I sang along out of habit, as we pulled away from Minneapolis and continued west. “Michigan seems like a dream to me now…..”

It really did. His proposal…..we were officially engaged now. No ring yet, but that didn’t matter. In a way, me inviting him to come back to my family had been my way of proposing, or at least, a very very strong invitation in that direction. But now things were official. I was going to marry him. And I felt my stomach flip-flop in nervous excitement. We were actually going to do this. 

We’d cut across Wisconsin, making our way at a relaxed enough pace that it honestly felt like we were getting our honeymooning done ahead of time. We’d been able to stop at some very fine dairies for cheese, both for ourselves and the mice, and now were winding our way across Minnesota. Our first night in the state, the mice had treated us to a recitation of the litany of “Now Johnny, Just How Big Do These Damn Mosquitoes Get, I Know We’re Supposed to Love All of God’s Critters But This is Pushing It”, which had originated on one of Great-Grandma Fran’s field expeditions. Dominic and I had treated ourselves to takeout pizza and gas station kringla while watching the mice recite some Minnesota-specific rituals, which included some very bad attempts at a Minnesotan accent on the mice’s parts. 

We’d stopped in the Twin Cities for a few days to stretch our legs and do a bit of restocking. There was a safe hotel run by a very nice family of bogeymen that we’d been able to keep the truck at while we explored. Dominic was in awe and slightly appalled by the sheer scale of the Mall of America, which I found amusing. His grumblings about American crass consumerism and the sanity of people who built a mall big enough to fit a theme park inside were delightful, as was his reaction to the Dippin’ Dots stand at the food court.

It was a fun way to spend a day, and we even managed to get us both some new clothes. Neither of us had had the biggest civilian wardrobes to begin with, and while I had picked up some punny t-shirts at various roadside attractions, Dominic was another story. I know it’s a bit cliche, but after his determined resistance to even consider any of the kitschy t-shirts I’d been showing him along our journey, I considered it a personal victory that I got him to buy a few t-shirts with actual words and images on them. He was a very pretty man, and I told him so - the slightly shy smile I got from him was reward in and of itself. He refused the “Come to the Dark Side, We Have Cookies” shirt I suggested, no matter how much I thought it was funny, but did concede to a shirt with Batman’s symbol on it, commenting that for us to match, I needed a Catwoman shirt. Seeing him relax like that in public, enough to make jokes, enough to reference silly little in-jokes between us….it felt like every mile behind us he was getting more and more comfortable with who he was as a person, away from the restrictions he’d lived most of his life under. I loved seeing him blossom like that. I loved him. I loved him so much it made my heart hurt. And we were gonna get married. 

_Denver, Colorado, in a speakeasy hidden under a pie shop:_

“I will have the….Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and a slice of the peach rhubarb pie.” Dominic read off the menu, before turning to me. 

“And I will have a slice of the bourbon pecan pie, and a Tom and Jerry’s Saucy Secret to drink.” The cocktail and pie menus were extremely inventive, and we were looking forward to working our way through both. 

“And I’ll need another five minutes to look at the menu, thanks!” chirped a voice from behind us. 

We whipped around in unison to find Rose Marshall staring at us, clad in a borrowed denim jacket, a Cheshire Cat grin on her perpetually teenage face.

“Aunt Rose!” I beamed at her. “What are you doing here?” The waitress scurried off, leaving us to our conversation.

“Heard from the roads my two favorite troublemakers had rolled into town, and thought I’d pop by.” She nodded at the bar. “And since I’m the one who brought you and Alex here in the first place, way back when, it makes sense that you’d take your man here at some point. This place has such a long history in the twilight, at least one of the waitstaff is usually a routewitch who knows to keep a coat around for any visiting ghosts.” She slid herself into the booth beside me, giving me a side hug. “So here I am, and here you are, and you’ve both put a lot of miles on you since I saw you in New Orleans. Including a stop in Buckley, good.”

I didn’t ask how she knew we’d stopped in Buckley - Rose was from Buckley, and part of her would always be tied there. Maybe the roads had told her, the last time a truck had brought her close. Maybe Mary had told her. I honestly didn’t know how she knew half the things she knew about us sometimes, but then again, the ways of road ghosts are myriad and varied.

“We did,” I confirmed.

“And?” She looked between the two of us, clearly looking for something. 

“And we’re engaged.” It came out in a bit of a rush - technically she was the first person we’d told, apart from the mice, but it felt good to tell someone. 

“I knew it!” She beamed. “Congratulations, you two! I knew it - I told Mary that if spending a night at the old house didn’t make him run off screaming in the other direction, no offense, Dominic, you two were in it for the long haul. Not that I had any doubts, of course, but still.” 

“Could you please not tell Mary about this just yet? Or anyone else?” It’s not that I didn’t know I was the subject of family gossip - whatever Rose and Mary might disagree on sometimes, I knew they kept tabs on us and traded information, and probably even placed bets, but it was weird to be so explicitly reminded. At least she hadn’t started telling embarrassing childhood stories yet. “We’re trying to actually get married before anything else can get too crazy. I figure if we elope before I bring him home to the parents…”

“Verity has been informing me all about her family’s propensity to attract chaos, no matter their best intentions,” Dominic said, smiling at me from across the table. “I love her deeply and want to marry her just as desperately, but it seems wise not to tempt fate if we can help it.”

Rose nodded. “That damn Healy luck. Makes sense, and it’s a way to minimize parental fuckery and all that. Can’t say I blame you.” She reached across the table to give Dominic a slightly more awkward side hug, much to his bemusement. “Welcome to the family. Let’s get me some booze and some pie, and you two can tell Auntie Rose what you two crazy kids have been up to.” 

  
  
  



End file.
